Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (Paperback)

by Annie Dillard (Author) "IT HAD BEEN LIKE DYING, that sliding down the mountain pass..." (more)
Key Phrases: palo santo trees, whistling swans, mangrove island, Santa Claus, Miss White, Napo River (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A collection of meditations like polished stones--painstakingly worded, tough-minded, yet partial to mystery, and peerless when it comes to injecting larger resonances into the natural world." -- --Kirkus Reviews

"Teaching a Stone to Talk is superb. As with the flying fish, Annie Dillard doesn't do it often, but when she does she silver-streaks out of the blue and archingly transcends all other writers of our day in all the simple, intimate, and beautiful ways of the natural master." -- -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"The natural world is ignited by her prose and we see the world as an incandescent metaphor of the spirit...Few writers evoke better than she the emotion of awe, and few have ever conveyed more graphically the weight of silence, the force of the immaterial." -- -- Robert Taylor, Boston Globe

"This little book is haloed and informed throughout by Dillard's distinctive passion and intensity, a sort of intellectual radiance that reminds me both Thoreau and Emily Dickinson." -- -- Edward Abbey, Chicago Sun-Times

Product Description
Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Revised edition (July 20, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060915412
• ISBN-13: 978-0060915414
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31,700 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Contains some of her finest essays, March 3, 2002

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I remember a paradoxical statement about the Bible that I heard attributed to Karl Barth: "The Bible is not the word of God, but it contains the word of God." Well, TEACHING A STONE TO TALK is not Annie Dillard's finest book (that distinction belongs to either PILGRIM AT TINKERS CREEK or AN AMERICAN CHILDHOOD), but it contains her best work, i.e., some essays that are as good as anything that she has ever written. Almost inevitably, as in most collections, some of the essays aren't nearly as strong as the best, but the good ones make this slender volume essential reading for any fan of Ms. Dillard.

My personal favorite among the fourteen comprising this book is also the longest, "An Expedition to the Pole." I consider myself to be a deeply religious person, but I also find church services to be almost unbearable (much like one of my literary heroes, Samuel Johnson). In this essay, Dillard contrasts her experiences in an utterly dreadful church service with many of the attempts in the nineteenth century to mount expeditions to reach the North Pole. The attempts of those adventurers are simultaneously tragic and laughable, in that their goal was so vastly beyond their means. The implication is that the same is true in worship: we attempt to worship god, but our efforts are clumsy and fall far short of the mark. There is nobility in both, and certainly Dillard doesn't want to imply that worship is futile. But the parallels are there. It is a brilliant essay.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From The Mundane To The Infinite ... And Back Again, October 4, 2004

By	Jon Linden (Warren, N.J. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book truly is a well crafted and literary set of short stories; all or most of them being autobiographical. But the author does something special in this book. Her stories all center around the physical, mixed with the spiritual, mixed with the metaphysical, both alone and in concert, and finally, in the way they seem to co-exist, at least to her perception and observation.

The substance of her plot is more a substance of a progression of human feelings, than events. The events just happen, the reasons, she tells us, are personal, and mostly uncontrollable. But they ARE. They exist temporally, spiritually, physically, and metaphysically all at the same time. How each of us sees these things is a bit like Albert Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity. It all depends on how you come to the words of Annie Dillard, and how we interpret what she is saying. Whether you can relate to it out of your own experience, or whether you can live it vicariously through Dillard's writing matters not, what matters is the attitude and state of mind that one brings to the stories.

For readers interested in a mind expanding vision of reality, and non-reality, this book is beautifully written to take you to all these places. And it takes you through feelings, that almost every reader can relate to. It is worth every minute spent on it.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mesmerizing adventures........, November 3, 2001

By	Margaret "fugirl" (NYC) - See all my reviews

.......as can only be expressed by Annie Dillard.

This collection of Dillard's travels and experiences will simply make you want to go out and experience each for yourself!

You will long to find yourself in the midst of a solar eclipse: "The grasses were wrong; they were platinum. Their every detail of stem, head and blade shone lightness and artificially distinct as an art photographer's platinum print. This color has never been seen on earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte. The hillside was a 19th century tinted photograph from which the tints have faded...............The sky was navy blue. My hands were silver." Reading Dillard's words has simply made me promise myself that I will not pass from this life without having witnessed the wonder of a solar eclipse.

The remainder of Dillard's expeditions and encounters are equally amazing. Travel with her words and come to know the terrors of the North Pole, the sheer tenacity of weasels, the natural wonders of the Galapagos Islands, the journeys of mangrove islands, fantasic mirages over Puget Sound and much more. Dillard brings each to full life through her descriptions and her thoughts on each. I highly recommend this book to anyone with a sense of curiosity and adventure! You'll love it!